You have got to be kidding me (Part II) July 15, 2009
Posted by imfb in Current Events.3 comments
I’m trying to avoid getting up on my soapbox too much, but I’m just unhappy with politicians (don’t mistake this for having all my hatred flowing towards one political party, I find them both pretty useless nowadays).
(1) The CIA controversy. Congressional democrats (several of whom I have voted for or worked for) are up in arms that the CIA had a secret plan to kill terrorists that they weren’t informed of. Go ahead and read that sentence again. Apparently the CIA devised a program for killing terrorists in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. My immediate reaction to this news was, “Of course they did.” In fact, I would be pretty upset if they didn’t.
The kicker? They never implemented this particular program. So according to all reporting on the subject, Congress is upset that the CIA had an idea that they NEVER ACTED ON, and didn’t tell them.
(2) President Obama is asking for an investigation of whether our Afghan allies killed 2000 Taliban prisoners following our invasion. Now, I firmly believe in the Geneva Conventions and think that all POW”s should be treated fairly. But we’ve got a lot of nerve. War is an ugly (though unfortunately necessary) thing, and bad things will happen during it.
We invaded Afghanistan and sought the help of the Northern Alliance. We had left them to fight for themselves since the rise of the Taliban. They were badly outnumbered by one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The Taliban instituted the strictest religious law the world has ever seen. Women were beaten for driving in taxis and were not allowed to attend school, clapping your hands at a sports event became illegal. There were widespread cases of rape of murder carried out by the Taliban, included the massacre of 8000 innocent men, women, and children at Mazar-i-Sharif. We did nothing during their rule under after September 11th. We have not asked for investigations into the Taliban crimes, nor called for war crimes tribunals. The Northern Alliance are our allies who, in their own country, may commited a crime during military actions which brought them the first hope of freedom in decades.
It seems hopelessly backwards, so far this month we’ve ignored hopes for democracy in Iran, punished a country trying to save its democracy in Honduras, and are now investigating our allies in Afghanistan. As the great guys at Blackfive pointed out, “2000 dead terrorists sounds like the beginning of a citation for a medal.”
